THEIR MASTER

Four

Hark woke with a gasp. He was lying in a pool of water. His face was wet, and his singlet was soaked through. For a moment, he had absolutely no idea where he was or even who he was. All he knew was that he couldn't feel his left shoulder. Then he moved his head, and he felt it with a vengeance. Pain surged through him, and for a moment he wondered if his neck had been broken. A ring of gri

"You learned your place now, new meat, or do you want to go around again?"

Hark tried to sit up. He felt as if he were going to vomit. "I…"

Renchett, the one who seemed to be in love with his knife, was holding a plastic container. He must have dumped the water over the fallen man.

Hark tried to speak again. "I…won't sit in your chair no more."

Dyrkin nodded. "You learn fast, new meat."

Beyond the gri

"One of you get him up on his feet and into his coffin."

None of them moved. The four stood as if fear had rooted them to the spot.

Renchett scowled. "You hear me, you scumsucks?"

The four looked at each other as if each was unwilling to be the one to draw attention to himself by stepping through the ring of longtimers. Renchett didn't wait for a volunteer. He grabbed the nearest by the front of his singlet.

"You, asshole, get that man to his coffin! Move!"

Renchett assisted the movement with the steel toe of his boot. The recruit leaned over Hark, extended a hand, and hauled him to his feet. Despite the pain in his shoulder and the weakness in his legs, Hark had noticed something. Renchett had referred to him as a man. Not as new meat, scumsuck, or asshole but as a man. He wondered if he'd passed some sort of initial test. Hark swayed, and a second recruit moved quickly forward to support him from the other side. The two of them helped him from the rec room and along the row of silent coffins. As they lowered him down into the one assigned to him, he looked at them questioningly.

"We're all in this together, and we ought to know each other's names. I'm Hark."

"I'm Waed."

"I'm Morish."

Hark lay back with a groan. "It seems like we're going to have to stick together."

Waed and Morish stood in the narrow aisle between the rows of coffins as if they were uncertain whether they should go back to the rec room. Hark dropped the lid of the coffin and pulled the thin thermal-weave blanket around his shoulders. A sense of cold desolation crept over him, a helpless uncertainty as to what was in store for him in this strange, violent, alien place. Despite all his fears, though, within minutes he was fast asleep.

The period of sleep seemed to last no time at all. He felt as if he'd only just closed his eyes when horns started baying and the temperature in the coffin dropped close to freezing point. The lid of the coffin opened of its own accord, and he could hear the hectoring voice of Overman Elmo.

"Up, you scum! Everybody up! You want to die in bed?"

Topman Rance stood back in the entrance to the messdeck. Let Elmo roust them out of their pits-they were his battle unit and his babies. Rance had four units to worry about, and the whole damned combat coordinate. Elmo could scare the hell out of the recruits and take abuse from Renchett and Dacker. Rance noticed that one of the recruits, the one called Hark, was moving stiffly and that there was an ugly bruise ru

Rance waited until Overman Elmo had run the twenty through the cleanoff and a fast workout on the hexagons. The longtimers were dispatched to their various work details. Keep the bastards busy and they won't have the spare time and energy to start cooking up nastiness. Finally, Elmo paraded the five recruits along the aisle in front of their respective coffins, standing at whatever approximation of rigid attention they could manage. When everything was to Elmo's satisfaction, he took a step back and deferred to Rance.

"Your recruits, Topman Rance."

"Thank you, Overman Elmo."

Rance walked slowly along the line of recruits. He stopped in front of the last.

"Name?"

"Morish 34103-301779."

Rance regarded him bleakly. "I have a name and a title, boy."

"Morish 34103-301779, Topman Rance."

"Just remember that, boy." He moved to the next man. "Name?"

"Voda 34103-301780, Topmari Rance."

"Good."

"Waed 34103-301781, Topman Rance."

"Hark 34103-301782, Topman Rance."

Rance probed the bruise on Hark's shoulder with his index finger. "Trouble, boy?"

"No trouble, Topman Rance."

The kid was smart. He had a swift grasp of the essentials.

"Name?"

"Eslay 34103-301783, Topman Rance."

Rance faced the pickup. He smiled coldly and rubbed his hands slowly together.

"Well, my children, my poor little lost sheep, now that you all know your name, your number, and, I-hope, for your sakes, your place, we come to the most important part of your initiation into the armies of the Therem Alliance." He glanced at Elmo. "Suits, boots, and helmets, Overman Elmo."

Elmo snapped his fingers. "Suits, boots, and helmets!"

The process was taking on aspects of a ritual. Rance was doing this deliberately. He wanted the recruits fully in his grip. There were some who spooked when the suits first touched them. A floating pallet drifted down the aisle. It carried five black and bulbous space helmets, five pairs of heavy-duty combat boots, and five shapeless blobs of what looked like opaque black jelly. Rance hefted one of the blobs.

"Puzzled, are we? Just dying to blurt out, 'But that isn't like any suit of clothes that I've ever seen, Topman Rance'?"

He paused. None of the recruits looked as if he was dying to blurt out anything.

"And you'd be quite right. These suits are like nothing you've even imagined. It wouldn't be putting it too strongly to say that this suit is almost as important as you are. It will be your friend, your partner, and your constant companion, and you will treat it accordingly. When you're not wearing it, you will store it in the specially designed environment in your lockers. You see, my children, these suits are living beings."

He sca

"If you delve into your brand-new memories, my chil- dren, you will find the term 'symbiotic parasite.' That is exactly what these suits are. They are a form of animal life with their own minimal intelligence. The want nothing more than to guard and protect us. They were genetically tailored and selectively bred by our masters, the Therem, to interact with us humans. They can absorb massive amounts of radiation and impacts that would kill us."